


Our New Home

by impudent_strumpet



Series: Lighting The Way [3]
Category: Plague Tale: Innocence (Video Game)
Genre: Adorable, Anniversary, Brother-Sister Relationships, Childhood, Childhood Memories, Dialogue Light, F/M, Family Feels, Family Loss, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Flashbacks, Fluff, Forests, Grief/Mourning, Hugo being cute, Hugo knows things, Husbands, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Little kids are smarter than people think, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Other, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon, Remembrance, Tears, i need to stop, outdoors, yet again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 19:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19400722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impudent_strumpet/pseuds/impudent_strumpet
Summary: It's been exactly a year since Amicia and Hugo lost their lord father to the Inquisition. While they could not give him a proper burial and they are far from home, on the run, they honor him in their own way.And Lucas gets some love for once! :)





	Our New Home

**Author's Note:**

> Boom, yet another one-shot stitched together from loose threads of other half-fics that I didn't know what to do with. I need to stop with all of these and just write a multi-chapter fic already...or maybe put all of these together into a collection.
> 
> And I didn't know what to title it, so I just grabbed the title from Chapter VIII and adapted it a little ^^;

Sunlight dappled through the tree branches onto the grass where Amicia sat overlooking the horizon, not unlike how it had on the day that her father was murdered right before her eyes and everything the de Rune children had known was ripped away from them. A pang of grief welled up within Amicia at the thought as she stared at the pendant she wore bearing her family sigil. Exactly a year had passed since then.  
  
Amicia sighed, wishing she could at least have his bones interred back home. There must be some priest there who would do it, even if it was deemed more than what was deserved by one who defied the Inquisition. But Amicia and her brother were still considered suspicious over there, as the Inquisition was searching for the de Rune children.  
  
Robert de Rune had been survived by his children and his widow, who was still a comely woman for one in her early thirties and who local suitors had flocked to practically the moment she came out of bedrest. In the end, she remarried one who liked her well enough and seemed to have an affinity for Amicia, Hugo, and Lucas. How much Béatrice mourned her first husband, despite that he was her first love and the father of her children, Amicia really could not say, as her mother seemed too stoic to be grieving.  
  
Amicia herself was still not quite over her father's death. After all, apart from her beloved dog Lion, he had been the only one of her immediate family to pay her practically any attention since Hugo's birth. He must have felt his wife's distance too, having told Amicia when she remarked on it that they all had their obligations.  
  
Amicia remembered, in particular, overhearing a moment of tension between her parents a few years ago.  
  
_"I cannot keep doing this, Béatrice."_  
  
_"What are you talking about?"_  
  
_"Neglecting Amicia like this. You know I would protect Hugo with my life, but there has been no immediate threat to him since his birth."_  
  
_"I know there is. Just waiting for the right moment...I can feel it."_  
  
_"Really? What about the loneliness that surrounds a girl who has not even seen her mother, father, or brother in years? Can you feel that? We have another child, you know. Yet you have not acknowledged that since she first flowered a few years ago, and that was only out of obligation."_  
  
_Béatrice's voice rose. "You think it is not obligation that has me looking after Hugo day and night? Do you think I enjoy this, that I would not rather be with Amicia than watch our five-year-old go through such pain every day?"  
  
"Béatrice, there are people in the next district who die within the week if they so much as cough. Do you really think you are going to find a cure for Hugo?"  
  
"I'm his mother! I have to try!"  
  
Robert was silent for a moment, then sighed. "You do that. But I have a duty to my daughter."_  
  
It must have been as miserable for Béatrice as it had been for her daughter and husband, Amicia knew. She could only imagine what the plague doctors in those elongated masks stuffed with herbs went through in other parts of Aquitaine and surrounding cities, seeing countless people die with their own eyes. Hugo had gasped and hidden behind her, clutching her tunic more tightly, when he first saw a group of them.  
  
_"Amicia...what are those?"  
  
"Oh...plague doctors. They take care of the sick people here."  
  
"They look scary..."  
  
"It's alright, Hugo. They won't hurt us."_  
  
"Are you thinking of Daddy?"  
  
Amicia turned to the source of the sudden voice, to see her little brother behind her.  
  
She smiled sadly. "Yes. I miss him."  
  
Hugo sat on the grass beside her. "I did not see him much...but I miss him too. And I'm sure Mummy does."  
  
"Of course. She loved him." Amicia looked up. "This reminds me of the forest back home... Father said that he courted Mother there."  
  
"What?" Hugo looked at her quizzically.  
  
"As in, he fell in love with her there and asked her to marry him, which she accepted," Amicia explained.  
  
"Amicia! Don't make it yucky!" Hugo exclaimed.  
  
Amicia snickered. Even after all they had been through, Hugo was still a five-year-old boy. It was good to have what remained of his innocence around, in this world that held a cautious hope for them, like the symbol of the hawthorn that Hugo had once put in his sister's hair, but still sickness and death around every corner.  
  
"I wished sometimes that I could have been with you and him...and Lion, when I heard you outside. I got lonely, by myself." Hugo leaned against his sister, who pulled him close to her. "Amicia? Did you ever think back then...that Mummy didn't love you?"  
  
The elder sibling thought of that. She remembered, when she was ten, crying one night because she thought that her mother did not love her anymore now that Hugo had been born. Her father must have heard her, as he had gone in to reassure her.  
  
_"Amicia, my love, you were your mother's first child. She could never love Hugo more than you, and she could never, ever stop loving you," her father had said as he knelt by her bedside, holding her hand._  
  
_"You're just saying that to make me feel better," Amicia had sobbed._  
  
_"Amicia, listen to me," her father started, a sudden gravity in his voice. "Your brother was born with a terrible disease. It causes him pain every day. We do not know how long he will live. Your mother must care for him every day and try to find some kind of cure or treatment. It is no fun for her, trust me. She wishes with all of her heart that she could be with you, and she loves you more than you could ever know. I know how difficult this is for you, but you have to believe me."_  
  
After that, he had read her favorite childhood bedtime story to her, as he had used to. For her father's sake, Amicia had tried her hardest to believe him. It sometimes did not feel like his words were true at all, but how could Amicia distrust her own beloved father?  
  
He must have told her mother how their daughter felt, because sometimes, just before Amicia drifted off to sleep, she heard her mother softly walk in and felt her kiss her goodnight, with what Amicia could somehow sense as carrying both tenderness and sadness, before leaving within seconds. That had done something to reassure Amicia. But it did not stop her from feeling resentment and jealousy whenever Hugo came up in conversation.  
  
Still, she would come to love Hugo as her brother. That was for sure. In the five years he had taken up nearly every bit of their mother's attention, if he had ever told Amicia he was sorry for being sick, she would have probably answered back then with "That's alright," not really meaning it. Yet, when he did in that time they hung up their pendants in the forest in memory of their parents, Amicia loved him enough then that she was distressed by the statement, of his feeling like a burden on her, and pulled him into her arms comfortingly.  
  
Even so, for all those years it was hard for her. No matter how she tried, she could never seem to banish that half-emptiness, that aching void from feeling that one of her parents did not care about her.  
  
"Amicia?" Hugo prompted.  
  
"Oh..." Amicia did not want Hugo to feel guilty for her, but she also did not want to lie to him again. "It...was difficult for me sometimes. But none of that is your fault. You never wanted any of this." She ruffled Hugo's hair.  
  
"I know Daddy loved you, and I know Mummy does," Hugo said. "She sometimes looked out the window of my room when she heard you outside, laughing with Daddy and Lion. She said she was alright, but I knew she wasn't. She wanted to be with you."  
  
"Well, weren't you a perceptive one," Amicia japed.  
  
"I mean it, Amicia," Hugo insisted.  
  
Amicia's face fell. "I wouldn't have known it then, when I was playing outside and fooling around." How both Amicia's life and her innocence had been protected by her mother. How much she had sacrificed for both of her children...even their own happiness, to ensure they both would live.  
  
She pulled Hugo into her lap and gathered him in her arms, pressing his face into her shoulder so he would not see the tears in her eyes.  
  
"I know you hardly ever saw Daddy then and you missed him, but he loved you too," she told him. "To his very last breath."  
  
"Yes," Hugo said. "Mummy's new husband can't be my daddy."  
  
Amicia had the feeling it would come to this. Yet another sacrifice that her mother had made to ensure the family would survive. Hugo was still too young, and had lost his father too soon, to take it easily.  
  
She loosened her embrace around her brother and lowered him into her lap. "That's alright, Hugo. He doesn't have to be. Daddy would not want you to forget him...but he would want you to be happy."  
  
Hugo looked up at his sister, then back down at the grass. "It's hard, Amicia."  
  
"I know." Amicia patted the back of his head, like she would do whenever he put a flower in her hair. There were patches of many different flowers in this part of the forest, she noticed. "Hey, Hugo...do you recognize any of these flowers?"  
  
"Oh! Yes, I do!" Hugo piped, jumping up from his sister's lap and running up to a patch of velvety silvery-green leaves. "This is lamb's ear! It's little and soft, just like the ear of a lamb. Hunters and soldiers use it to dress wounds. It's a symbol of healing." He then ran up to another patch, of deep blue flowers. "And these are bluebells! They're used to stop bleeding, and the sap can be used as a bandage. It's a symbol of delicacy and kindness. And..." He ran over to another patch in the distance, his excitement following him, and Amicia laughed.  
  
Just a few seconds later, Lucas showed up in the distance. "...Am I interrupting something?" he asked.  
  
"No, not at all," Amicia laughed, turning to face him and wrapping her arms around her knees. "Our little herbalist is at it again."  
  
Lucas chuckled, then walked over to Amicia, who stood.  
  
"Did you need something, Lucas?" she asked.  
  
"No, just wondering where you two were," he said, then his expression grew sympathetic. "Today is the day your father was killed, isn't it?"  
  
"Yes," Amicia said sadly.  
  
"I'm very sorry," Lucas replied.  
  
"It's alright." Amicia looked over at her brother. "It will take him a while to become used to Mother's new husband."  
  
"I understand," Lucas said. "He's a good enough man...but he's not your father."  
  
"Yes," Amicia said. "I wish I could have at least given Father a proper burial."  
  
"I know." Lucas nodded. "But whatever is beyond the grave...I'm sure he has found peace, knowing his wife and children are safe and back together."  
  
Amicia smiled. "Thank you, Lucas."  
  
Lucas nodded again, smiling back, as the two gazed up at the clear sky above them.


End file.
